His home is an hour away,
down through the valley,
past shop-after-shop, butted
brown boxes, corrugated:
their seams drawn in
fiery red-orange, exhale
a noxious gray smoke,
pushing gondolas, tankers,
muscled locomotives, all to be
stripped-to-their-skeletons
and rebuilt again.

The day-shift is fresh-
out-of-bed, mugs
down its beans,
then hammers the sidewalk.
He nods as they pass, takes
one last precious hit from a spent
cigarette, then strides
to his door.

His wife sparks a match
on a kerosene burner, sizzles a pan
of tough meat and bone.

What Hopper brings to canvas this poet brings to the page, a moment both precise and stylized that calmly confronts a human paradox: that even our solitary natures connect us. The language is as dense and durable as the self-contained subject who seems to be another “muscled locomotive…” as he saunters past “shop-after-shop, butted brown boxes” on his way home to the “tough meat and bone” that sizzles in a pan. --Deborah Bogen

October 2018 Winners

First Place

The Emails Go Unanswered
by Lois P. JonesPenShells

Second Place

Hidden Room
by F.H. LeeThe Write Idea

Third Place

The Penitent
by Ken AshworthThe Writer's Block

Honorable Mention

You Can Call Me a Tough Cookie, But It Really Doesn’t Matter
by Midnight MoonWild Poetry Forum